From Puerto Natales, it is a few hour bus ride to the park. Then everyone piles out, fills out their entry forms, pays the fee, and loads back into buses to go to whichever section of the park they are to begin.

Until this year, reservations were not required for camping so we didn’t make any. Tim tried, but there are three different vendors and the websites aren’t very user friendly… So we ended up with a weird mix of camping and stays in Refugios in an unusual order, but we got to see everything. We weren’t able to hike the entire ‘O’ circuit as we wished, but all we missed was one gnarly steep pass. My knees are actually fairly happy about that!

It rains and snows and is really windy in the park. We ended up being fortunate for our weird reservations, as we had extra days in a few spots where we could wait out the weather when it was bad, and also wait out the worst of Tim having a fever and being sick.

The internet in Patagonia is about like the internet in American Samoa… I’ll post a few pics from different sections of our travels whenever I can actually upload them! 

These are from the first section of our hike.

Park entry signs

Heading into the mountains

Happy to see Refugio El Chileno after three very uphill hours in the rain.

Tim is sick with a fever and cough, so we nap in the bunk bed during the rainy afternoon

Refugio hallway, dorms of bunk beds on either side

One of many waterfalls along the trail

Our first view of the Towers, coming around the bend and over the hill…

The famous Torres del Paine